Monday, August 13, 2012

Jessica Pressler at New York Magazine had written a must-read article that came out just yesterday that ends with a sometimes contentious interview with Obama BFF and Wall Street fuckup Jamie Dimon.

Dimon is a classic case of what happens when a petty New York thug amasses too much money and power and entertains global ambitions. You take away the $1000 suits and limos and corporate jets and what you're left with is the same petty thug and hustler, a knife fighter whose passions only get riled up at the slightest criticism. And, as he proved at the IMF meeting nearly a year ago, will literally stick a shiv between the ribs of any lawmaker or bank governor who would dare impose regulations on how he makes his personal ill-gotten fortune.

Dimon and his too-big-to-fail JPMorgan bank earlier this year was embarrassed when news broke that the bank lost $2 billion, which was then upped to $6 billion. Now they're talking $9 billion or more. Dimon had the gall to call the shortfall "a tempest in a teapot", which would be laughable just on the grounds of being a cliche. But the "tempest in a teapot" gaffe was made more and more ridiculous by the dawning realization that the much-maligned Volker rule would've prevented the bank from losing that $9 billion through reckless speculation.

That's right. Paul Volker offered Dimon a way to do his business a little more cleanly and to stave off massive losses and to this day, Dimon resents him and the lawmakers who'd voted for it. So what does Obama's BFF say about his bank dropping enough money to provide health care for millions of Americans for a year? Like Mitt Romney said last Saturday when announcing his running mate as "the next president of the United States", Dimon dismissively told an intern recently, "Sure, we make mistakes."

No, a banking mistake is when a teller gives you $100 when you only wanted to withdraw $80. What happened at JPMorgan was business as usual on Wall Street. And then, as top banking executives are wont to be, Dimon was caught completely offguard when the whale beached itself on Wall Street and landed squarely on top of him.

Underlings were blamed, 30 year employees hung out to dry. To this day, in typical CEO fashion, Dimon blames his subordinates for telling him information that led to the now-infamous "tempest in a teapot" comment. Compounding his embarrassment, his own mentor and now rival Sandy Weill said on national television, “What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking.”

In other words, maybe we should bring back Glass Steagall.

The only thing that can seem to fire up Dimon's passions these days is when his and his bank's bottom line is threatened by even so much as a ha' penny. Dimon still spits venom from his pie hole at the very mention of regulation and the mere suggestion that perhaps JPMorgan should be split up into smaller entities like Ma Bell.

"Size lets us build a $500 million data center that speeds up transactions and invest billions of dollars in products like ATMs and apps that allow your iPhone to deposit checks. We move $2 trillion a day, and you can see it by account, by company. These aren’t, like, little things. And they accrue to the customer. That’s what capitalism is.”

Not according to Teddy Roosevelt, who was more progressive than Obama in the worst right wing fever dreams about him and would've been Dimon's worst nightmare if the 26th president and not the 44th were running the executive branch. Roosevelt personally pioneered and practically midwifed the antitrust legislation that in a more conscientious and reform-minded day and age would've prevented virtual monopolies such as JPMorgan not to mention Microsoft and Google.

Then, of course, there was the indignity of being publicly fellated by the cock puppets of the Senate Banking Committee last June in which the only thing that separated the Democrats from the Republicans was how fast they scooted under the table at which Dimon was seated. During that so-called grilling on the Hill, senators openly asked Dimon, "Oh, master, how can you save us? Will you head up our new cat food commission and show us The Way?" But if you ask Dimon about being summoned to Washington, he'll act as if the whole affair was beneath him. "I didn't expect that," he told Pressler.

This, coming from a guy who. absurdly, sits on the board of the NY Fed, the same corrupt organization that spawned Treasury Secretary Tim "Eraserhead" Geithner, the same regulatory agency that's supposed to oversee banks like Dimon's JPMorgan Chase.

And to his dying day, Dimon will refuse to accept any collective let alone personal responsibility whatsoever for the mess that made the global financial markets and Capitol Hill panic by backing up trillions of taxpayer and Fed money to the lobbies of banks. The same mess that gave birth to Occupy Wall Street and caused the loss of at least 8 million jobs and millions of foreclosures due to toxic, bundled securities consisting of mortgages, life insurance policies, whatever could be bundled.

To Dimon, what happened at the London investment office was just a bad day at work, a singular mistake, a banking anomaly and anyone who dares criticize the banking industry in general is just a know-nothing scumbag who doesn't make any money, as Dimon spat at a group of reporters last February.

Jamie Dimon serves as an object lesson as to the danger of the insolence of insularity, as to what a huge mistake it was for us to roll into the warehouses the guillotines that punished Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Because Wall Street's top executives to this day after causing the worst crash since 1929 have no problem baring their snow-white, well-capped teeth at the slightest hint of criticism and have even less of a problem telling those who aren't fellow billionaires to not eat cake but to eat shit and die. Quickly.

Instead, sadly, the guillotines are of anecdotal, historical value reminding us of a time when the people still had the power and the gumption to literally drag people like Jamie Dimon into the streets and give them the Final Haircut. Instead, sadly, people like Dimon are coddled by the US Senate, the House and the President of the United States who, like Dimon, has forgotten his roots at the expense of working-class people.